Tuesday, July 23, 2013

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Fulfilling a campaign promise, Gov. Maggie Hassan signed a law Tuesday making New Hampshire the 19th state to allow seriously ill residents to use marijuana to treat their illnesses.

"Allowing doctors to provide relief to patients through the use of appropriately regulated and dispensed medical marijuana is the compassionate and right policy for the state of New Hampshire, and this legislation ensures that we approach this policy in the right way with measures to prevent abuse," Hassan said in a statement.

The law allows patients with cancer and other conditions to possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana obtained from nonprofit dispensaries. To qualify for medical marijuana, New Hampshire residents would have to have been a patient of the prescribing doctor for at least 90 days, have tried other remedies and have exhibited certain symptoms.

The law took effect with Hassan's signature but getting the program operating could take up to two years. The bill calls for a commission to be appointed as soon as possible to implement the new system. Patients must be issued special identification cards to obtain the drug from dispensaries and possess it.

"This legislation is long overdue and comes as a relief to the many seriously ill patients throughout New Hampshire who will benefit from safe access to medical marijuana," saidMatt Simon, a New Hampshire-based legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project. "Those suffering from debilitating conditions like cancer and multiple sclerosis deserve legal, safe, and reliable access to medical marijuana."

Monday, July 22, 2013

Jimmy Carter is making waves: "America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time,” he told a meeting of the American Bridge, held in Atlanta, when asked about Edward Snowden’s exposure of Washington’s secret global surveillance system. Looks like the only outlet that covered the meeting was Der Spiegel, but word is spreading and it won’t be long before the Usual Suspects start ranting about what aflake Carter is, and that he should shut up already and go lock himself in his presidential library. But think about it: for a former President to say this is unprecedented in modern times.

The NSA spying scandal, he went on to tell his audience, is subverting democracy around the world: he warned that one consequence of the Snowden revelations will beincreasing suspicion of American online platforms, such as Facebook and Google, both of which he characterized as major factors energizing pro-democracy movements abroad.

Carter’s previous statements about the Snowden affair were mildly supportive: he toldCNN he thought "the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive," and that Snowden’s bringing the secret surveillance of Americans "to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial." Yet this new statement goes way beyond that: it is a sweeping condemnation of the current regime. That a former US President would say such a thing has got to be the scariest public pronouncement I’ve heard since the Watergate era. What’s even scarier: Carter is right.